something on my shower curtain

 

i will revise this post tomorrow.
am thinking that i might need to create
my own textiles for cloths...that i don't
have and can't have certain things that
i find self loving in jude's cloths....
and i also don't want to "get" them.
so...what to do?
will need to make some things. they
will be
faux
but...my own
faux
and so....?

weaving one of the selves in

 

this is Plain Gramma, otherwise known as
Gramz
weaving a pie.
for the 20 yr old grandson.
he says it is the BEST cherry pie, special.

you make a crust.
dump 2 cans of cherry filling in
weave
a lattice top
and bake.

i think it might be the lattice top?????

horns

 

Manya, i became a mother when i was 26.
i became a grandmother when i was 43.
became a great grandmother last year, give or take
when i was almost 64.
my daughter keeps birth/kidding records for her
dairy goats.
when i try to think of these things, i feel
like i should do something similar.
anyway...the GreatGrandSon's little giraffe
has horns.
Mama's still to go and then off in the mail
tomorrow.
some things don't change. Won't change, no
matter. babies are conceived and born, the
holiday of Christmas in this culture rolls
around every 12 months and grandmas are
filled with the urge to be grandmas. Great
or plain.

ok

 

Mama
little guy
ok.
the original plan was to make a giraffe cape too, for
Julian, with a hood. after today, i am thinking...hmmmm.
so..don't know what will rise up within me tomorrow.
but here we are.
Why does he love giraffes? how interesting. being
ONE, where does his preference come from? one wonders.
and he loves
softness.
hmmm.
more than the usual love of softness.

hand puppets: puppets often say things that
people are unable to articulate. even very
little people.
it's been a looong time since i made a
puppet. am thinking about them now.
his mom will take one of their big moving
boxes and make a little puppet theater
of it...which is just to cut a window
behind a big enough space of box for a
person to hide.
if it turns out that i "go there", to
live
where they do, or near
i think i might make a fancier puppet
theater. of wood and with
curtains.
painted with beauty Full designs.
puppets.

good enough

 

here's the little guy.
now for the Mama

no escape

 

how is it that one very small sock puppet
for one very small little boy
be so
complex. ? .
not only in it's physical reality,
but it's christmas tangle...
like that tree tinsel that gets
into everything......

excitement

 

i DO have one holiday each year that i get all
excited about, that i look so forward to.
New Year's Eve.
i get some kind of food i normally
don't, sometimes it's that i make a
giant lasagna casserole. sometimes it's
been crab legs but not so much anymore
because it really needs to be excessive and
crab legs in Socorro are first hard to come
by at all, and if they appear in the Smith's
Grocery, excess is, well, Way Excessive...so
something more like lasagna with no holding
back on ingredients. ALL the cheeses. Fresh
spinach layer. real sauce, from scratch.
garlic bread and a salad to die for.
then, the new

~calendar~

after the gluttony, after its all put away and the
kitchen is
clean,
it's the calendar ritual. the old comes off the wall
and i sit, a particular very fine point pen in hand,
and
transfer all the important information, slowly. very
very carefully, month by month to the
new calendar.
notations at the top and bottoms of months as needed...
sometimes it seems important to note something from years back on
the upcoming year...

this is my most real ritual. it has intense meaning
for me. it places me somehow
and is extremely important.

today, going to the Dollar Store to get the socks for
the Giraffe sock puppets for the new man boy Julian Daniel Ortiz,
i also got the next calendar.
here it is and wouldn't you know.

something just happened

 

 

 

that gives me a Great Burst of Hope
for this coming new year ~

i always pay attention to new "company" on
the journey...people who sign on in the little
following box
and
just now, i see
Joe
manhandled threads
!
and i am surprised and wondering about the
great sense of happiness this brings, reading
his blog words....
and it weaves in perfectly with these things
pictured that have been on my mind this week
and with the thoughts this morning of
my son

and the baby man that is the son of my granddaughter

so, Joe
Welcome here and i am so glad you have come.

holiday cloth 2010 ...myth

 

"this holiday season can bring the best out in us.
let's accept that." jude hill

and this is some, the ones that were oriented
to image. thank you to All of you who encouraged ~
Penny: a roadside altar in Central America
Linda and Marti: forest landscape
nance: a temple of Christmas
Debi: a hidden tree
Suzanna: another plane altogether
Gracie: a tent, a little dot of light and human intensity
nance: the collective consciousness
Elizabeth: the southern summer night sky
Peggy/Woman with Wings: moon, reflected in water
susan: a tree, a house, home
sandra: the sun below
Penny: capturing the moon, rooted in the moon
marti: tassels, guardians of light
jude: a sun keeper
Debi: protecting/nurturing sun?/moon?
Twhich: snake, lizard, Ouroboros
and then new friend Emmy who is investigating symbology
on her blog

and my Dear Helen wondered: so, which IS IT!

and i loved all these thoughts.
i ask myself Helen's question. (don't stop, helen)...
as i stitch, i tell self different stories...one that
the Sun goes to a secret place, a different level of
being during this time
or Sun is absorbed into the earth, into roots, and is
reluctant
or Sun, in infinite wisdom withholds, allowing rest
or or or
but what it mostly is for me, is lack of light. and
each year, i endure this, watching the days until that
One Moment when balance is tipped in its extreme and
there is more dark than light. one day/night and then
we begin again, moving toward Light.
but what is best about the making of this cloth is
that it caused in me a realization that i can make
my
own
myth.
that that is in some way i don't fully comprehend as
yet, what this cloth making is for me. and if i
go deeply into it, i will find things i'd never
dreamed.
so...enough for now.

for me, it's about Light

 

 

 

heat, warmth, kinds of time and
more, that i am still thinking about.
will edit this as it goes.
the first pic:..you can see down on the floor, just before the rooster, a large
glass vase. as i sat this morning,
suddenly, the slow reluctant sun illuminated
this glass in a way that only happens
in December. MID December. nearer solstice,
it won't happen. but this morning it was
ablaze.
the second is self evident
the third pic is where this cloth resides.
it will have no backing, so that the light
can come through. it will remain there until
the long dark is over, until December 22 when we
again move toward the light.

 

solstice nearing

 

Mothers

 

even hypothetical necessity can be
a mother to invention...
TASSELS!!!!!

flying high to Greece

 

it IS! somewhere in a huge truck at this time...from Socorro, New Mexico USA
with a customs declaration that simply says: cloth

when i sat and looked at this piece of silk, looked at the stamped images and
words on it, read everyone's thoughts and information, all i could keep thinking
was that it wanted to be whole, remain itself. and i also simultaneously
pictured the header on Manya's Mythcolour ...same colour.....and i remembered
her posting a backdrop she had made for storytelling and i could feel her,
hear her telling stories when i saw that...and
right away, it was about that...if nothing else but to hang on her beautiful
ClothLine amidst lizards and rock and sea breeze that carries the scent of the ocean while she dreams up
ManyaMyths...

so, i filled out the form, sealed the envelope and Flora the postperson studied
the computer about sending things to Greece and she shyly looked up and said
"what Is it?", and i said "just some cloth from the thrift shop for my friend."
isn't that amazing?
yes.

Comfort Zone

 

what if
this was all i had to work with
and suddenly,
Christmas
became very important.
how would i make these
pieces of cloth as
beautiful as i possibly could?

 

experiment.
the colored pencil amidst the threads.
thinking about Jude's tutorial on composition.
can the colored pencil and stitch Ground this?, ground it "enough"?
have just begun...going slow...~

should also say that the
pleasure
of marking this woven cloth is
enormous

salvaged

 

so, this is the silk wad i salvaged from
Martha's trash. i talked with her yesterday
eve and found out that it is:
cobweb silk 2/60
she gets it from ColourMart UK

really really like this thread

really really slow cloth

 

more and wondering......

 

 

before i forge ahead....i am wondering.
i have used colored pencil on the area of
the mountain ridges, bled it with turpenoid. on
the far right, did this ~after~ i'd stitched, so
colored pencil is on stitch thread too. have
this feeling that it is kind of "cheating"...
but i didn't want to put fabric there, as in
applique a piece, even silk gauze, which was
tempting...and maybe i still will do that...
but i for what ever reason wanted to stitch it
but also the floss was too defined of colors.
thread i used is some very fine weaving silk that
Martha the weaver had thrown out...kind of a
neutral almost wheat. in the midst of all this,
i am thinking of dyeing threads, silk threads,
even for this cotton muslin stitching...i like
using it a lot...different quality makes it good
for diffused images.
so, halfway through the day.

it knows where it's going

 

 

 

am pretty sure....
but here's some last pics before it flies...
each seam is like this close up..
it's really quite amazing. and when i
hung it on the curtain to take the pics i
did see some "flaws" of character, maybe a
water mark? but, for sure a beauty.

does anyone know

 

about this piece of silk?
thrift shop again...
28" wide by about 4 yards long
??????

Helen asked

 

 

 

 

what did you use the ROOM for, before Spirit Cloth which i think i will
refer to as bSc.
Jude said:
"a room is such a personal space concept"
so...i liked your question, Helen. and all day i thought.
what DID i do.
well, i did make some things...trying to get back to
the
feeling of them. gourds. fiber figures.
i GREW a lot of things and spent maybe almost a
year with Sharon Astyk's work Depletion and Abundance
trying to learn all i could about what "Sustainable"
ment...individually, here, as a member of my community
here and as a citizen of the planet.
i looked at my kids when they were here and then
at their pics when they had left. i thought about
them.
i looked at my self. who on earth is She?

i guess i learned a lot. and i brought it all into
this Room.
the Room was i think a statement for me of having
endured.
it was a celebration of that. of having imagined
something that didn't happen as it had been imagined.
and then enduring the reality until .... hmmmm
until it freed me.
the Room was the "gesture: of that. my daughter,
jenny, and i smashed out, cut out with a sawzall
the wall of the trailer and made the ROOM.
i need to think more about this now.
but, Helen, that's what i did, pretty much.