handstories

New toys and thoughts

    There have been a lot of comings and goings, but finally back home.

    The workshop was good.  Christine is wonderful and generous with sharing her wealth of know-how, inspiration, materials, and ideas.  There was lots of playing, especially with trying out printing ideas.  Aiming for a new layer on the cloth, I experimented with this clever little press, gelli plate printing, indigo, and cyanotype.

    I really enjoyed exploring this liquid cyanotype process.  An area is painted with the mixture and then exposed to sunlight.

    There were experiments with overlapping layers, wet and dry fabric, and using various objects to create shapes.

    And then collaging things together...

    There are still some questions and ideas to try, and I'm looking forward to diving further.

Many kinds of stories

"Maybe a Lot of Things"

    I'm liking these longer cloths lately.  Space for more layers of the story, but not overwhelming.

    We went to Oregon for the weekend.  To visit family.  I spent most of the days with my mom.  Her days are so different now, without her husband, or the need to care for him.  There is so much time in a day when life suddenly empties of all you know. 

    We spent some time driving through my hometown (she lives in the city next-door now).  We stopped by to visit her best friend, who still lives next door to the house that I grew up in from age five until 18, when I left home.  The photo above is how it looks now.  It feels too wide open and lifeless to me.  My bedroom was there at the top.  I used to crawl out onto the roof on summer evenings.

    This is how it was... (photo taken as it was being sold when I was 24).  Blue (Mom's choice), the split log fence Mom built to keep us and the neighbor kids from riding our bikes over the corner, and the two big trees on either side of the corner.  A lot happened in that house.  Seeing it makes me want to weep from many kinds of sadness.

    When all of the leaves were picked off, the indigo stems were put into water.  Look at all of the new leaves!  They continue to grow above the stitching table among small stories- the ship in a bottle (it appeared when I was cleaning off my shelves to leave my teaching job), a bluebird from Blue, a clay "piece of mind" made by Moon when I told him I wish I had "peace of mind". 

    In the works, with a moon from Jude.  What goes under the arch, I'm not sure yet? It feels like a place where stories might meet.

Notes From the Basement

    I want to revisit some ideas from the past.  See what they might hold now. Will they mean the same things? Will they hold more? Will I even remember why I went there in the first place?  This one started with scraps on the table from recent pieces, including cloths dyed by Deb and Tina.

    (The water cloth is antique Japanese silk from Richard that I dyed in indigo years ago.)

    This is being written in The Basement.  (More about why in a moment.) The Basement is cellar-like. Uneven cement floor, ceiling that can be touched flat-footed with pipes and beams exposed, and more cobwebs than a haunted house. Not to mention all the THINGS & STUFF. 
   All to say, it’s not a comfortable relaxing place to be.  And it's cold down here.

    Some things were thrown yesterday- me, some words, a tantrum, and a spatula.

    Fortunately, K laughed through it all, took over the dinner cooking, and brought wine up from The Basement (one of its good qualities).

    There had been disappointments, frustrations and a triangle tangle of a conversation that I felt I had to scream to extricate myself from.  None of it was a big deal, I was just having A Day.

    Well, none of it was a big deal except for The Basement.  The plumbing issues are not over. It’s not the plumbers' fault. K and I took a gamble and lost.

    The Basement, where I am vigilantly babysitting the washing machine, waiting for the moments that it drains into the utility sink.  Each time switching out the buckets that I've placed under the hose, alternating them as they fill, and running them out the back door to pour into the woods.  Repeating this activity over and over so that the water doesn’t overflow out of the new drain in the floor into a 6-foot-wide puddle across the new cement.  The drain and cement that will need to be jackhammered out again to fix the problem.

"A Place of Through"

    Today I am resigned and resolved about it all, while running buckets to and fro.

    Earlier, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of finishing this piece.  Hours and hours of stitching without direction, filling in crevices between stones, beside starlit water... switching from French knots to Jude's thread beads willy-nilly, enjoying the surprise of color changes in Deb's threads, and nothing has been thrown... yet.

    "The day's not over," as Dad would've said.

buoyant

    Stitching away every inch of the day that I can, loving and floating in it.

    These little squares of self-talk, stories that I keep telling myself over and over, reshaped, but still the same, let me know that there's still something I need, or want to hear and believe.

    Ideas come in bursts in that moment between awake and sleep, making me wish it was possible to take a screen shot, because the memories of them are often blurry by morning.  Last night there was a bird singing a star song in the night sky...

   Dreams have come every night for the last couple of weeks.  Deep dreams, often in direct connection with conversations of the day.  Dreams of the dead- friends, co-workers, old teachers... of going back in time and seeing them again, wanting to warn and save them from their fate, and realizing that I can't control everything...anything.  Other nights, I'm visited by folks I've lost touch with, some on purpose.  The next day, I often hear from them.  Ghosts of my present.

    Language is a struggle lately.  The other night I said the wrong word for something to K..  There is stuttering, in thought and words.  Last night, in the middle of a "discussion" with Moon, I had to stop to gather the thoughts into coherent sentences (which, I discovered, is not a bad strategy when dealing with a teenager). I'm pretty sure it's not a medical issue, but rather a result of being full.  So much to swim through...

& beyond

    Found in a UFO pile (unfinished objects).  A lot of unstitching happened, new scraps were added, along with one of Jude's moons from ThreadCrumbs.

    And then it started to flow...  I was waking up as the sun rose, hurrying through shower, oatmeal and tea to get back to it.  The hours of the days slipped away.  I was told I'm becoming feral.

    When it was almost finished, someone asked if I usually have a plan?  Rarely.  It usually starts with scraps and goes from there.  Ideas come as I stitch along.  The story grows too.  The best ones tell me something about myself.  Understanding another layer of that was the gift of this one.  That there is a strong deep relationship between going and connection.

    So much to think and feel about.

    "Beyond"

parenting (& cloth)

    With the first layer there are hopes and dreams, imagining how it might be, and even the fun of the unknown.  You try to make things light and beautiful.

    And then new things are layered on, adding depth and mystery, and the unknown can take on an ominous feeling.  

    And all you can do is hope that in the end, all of the loving, caring and hard work... everything that went into it all...

    Will shine through.

What came next

    Blue.  Lots of blue.  With a layer of flannel in-between.  I dug out the biggest pieces that could be found, including one with a rosy patch (I don't remember when or why that happened.)   And now stitching the three layers together.  There's a moon, an archway, and water lines are in the works.  

    This hasn't been thought through, nor is it being executed in a sensible way.  

    We'll see what comes of it.

    I am thinking so much, and have absolutely no clear thoughts.  There was wishing for the ability to time travel, but then realized that I have no idea of when I would go to, or what I would tell myself to do differently.

    Stitching on...

and pages

         Working through technical difficulties today. This has been a different kind of a making for me. One that flowed almost instantly and by accident. Cloths that might somehow work together were put into a stack, to pack up for taking to jury duty, and suddenly there was a book-like thing. Pages to flip through. A scrap added, a surprise layer. Unexpected over-lappings. It felt like a meditation/prayer before it was recognized it as such.

    The other night, while visiting a friend, I was stitching the pages together and saw that it wasn’t going to work, some of the stitching was too high and being covered by the binding stitches. Took it apart and sat it next to me, looking at it now and then.

    The answer was too easy and took too long to realize.  

    Finally, “I know what to do.”

    She wondered about my process. “Just looking at it sitting there, you know?”

    "Yep.”        Sometimes I get so stuck in what I thought was going to happen.   

    Same friend, same evening, describing a friend changing plans on her, and how she flowed with the winds of it all…

    He had said, “Wow. You’re really ok with things just suddenly changing?”

    “What else am I going to do?” she replied.

    “Come join us in our crazy clinging panicking places,” I said.

seeing through

    A rainbow path . . . traveling from the child's spirit . . .

    through heart . . . 

    to circle the moon, and back again.

    It's something about hoping and dreaming, and seeing and knowing a way through, and there's the holding of it all wrapped around the moon.

    Stitched first in seven solid threads in rainbow colors, then filled in with Deb's rainbowed threads.  A vibration of Self.

    It's been a quiet few days, for the most part.  Still slowly going through things, discovering the walls and floor in our bedroom that have been covered in boxes and piles for years.  Transition and lightening.

sisters

    A companion piece.  They didn't start out that way, but there they went.  This one is about space, not outer, probably inner, making and holding it.

    And looking at them here, side by side . . . how they are related, but still different.  Like family.

"Space" and "Story"- layers of oil paints mixed with cold wax medium on wooden boards, 12x12