i don't know what to call this....

 

i am
almost tongue tied.
how does someone celebrate their birth day when it finally does come?
arranging small pieces of cloth over and over and over until she finally
pours herself a cup of wine and begins to say thank you.
i want to THANK YOU ALL for the very real and great importance you have taken in
my life this year. your interest, encouragement and very real Beingness for me.
i think i have said this before, but it merits repeating...when i talk about
this blog, about your blogs, about the whole Spirit Cloth world, people comment
that it is as if i actually "know" you all, as in have met, face to face....
i feel we have. we have met cloth to cloth/heart to heart and it is very REAL.

so, here i am. i have realized in these last days, giving it all a lot of
attention, that i had indeed internalized some thought forms about what it means
to reach 65 years. how i had internalized something about what that might mean
i guess according to my american culture. that you get to uhhhh, maybe slow down?
you get to begin to ummm, tone down and get golden? hmmmm. as i said before,
fine tune?
well...
i have always been what you might say is "my own person". this has been both
positive and in certain ways, not so much, but it seems as if stuff is just wanting
to keep on coming.
it's been a year now, since i found Spirit Cloth. a year my birthday. i look
forward to continuing, the deepening, strengthening of all of it and i thank
you, all my cloth sisters, and most, i thank you
Jude.

don't make any comments yet, i am just looking

 

i have gone through all the comments for this and the last cloth and want to
respond to them...i will, maybe tomorrow.
but for this moment,
YVETTE: the question...what will we do with them? well, for me, i learn still.
it still is so hard for me, when i know that the mountains are "there", but
"there" makes it too crowded, top heavy, and it is so HARD for me to put the
mountains somewhere that they aren't...
or, even harder,
leave them out altogether????? eeee.

so i learn about this cloth making. have FAR to go......

but, all day, and i have only gotten this far.

WELL...
this comes in response to Deb G ~

remember, i was going to say something about something, the something having to do
with a birthday...
well, i decided that i had nothing to really say.
but then, Deb G said what she did
and
here i am...saying something.
it's kind of about clotheslines.
Everywhere i have lived, even if it were only for a few months, i have strung
a clothesline. i just like them.
and here, i had thought i would be forever. i had thought
i would be
hone
ing
my self
my life
here.
maybe not.
this year, when one would think that now begins the time of uhhhhh,
"fine tuning" a self, well
might not be so. might be a year of making an entirely
different life?
my daughter has proposed the thought of creating a place where all of the family,
my spawn,
might gather in the near future or in the long run
with the least compromise
and funny, because the "least compromise" is not about me, because i am the only
one who LOVES new mexico.
so....i may be setting up a new clothesline one of these days in the near future,
or the middle future. i think not the Far future, but who knows.

not thinking what it is, is enough

 

i spent a lot of time not wanting it
to be the clothes line. but it IS
the clothes line.
and once i let it be the clothes line
then, First Bird could come.

experimental surprise

 

 

 

i drew on this gourd i grew, maybe 10 years ago?
it is one of my favorites, not because i did so
well with the design, but because of the "scar"
on the back of it's perfect shape. looking at
the scar, i just began to draw the fish, which had
nothing to do with anything.

i am sitting with this cloth this morning, "asking"
for that same experimental mind

TaDa!

 

finished.

another reason

 

many things about this year of my
life...
this arrived the other day from Marti,
Fieldlady...who for so long would comment
on nance/nandas' and my cloth work but always
adding that she did not do such things.
What she has always given us through the
years are beautiful photographs and beautiful
words telling of her meanderings through
fields and down wooded paths, her collecting
of the "sacred ordinary" and placing these
twigs and blooms, pods and leaves joyfully
in her home.
When India's book Eco Colour first was available
here, i immediately knew it was going to
become a necessity for me, and then i
suddenly knew the larger reason and was lucky
enough to get two copies. Since receiving the
book, Marti the field lady has become
EcoColorista Supreme, creating some of the
most delicate and elegant cloths with found
and thrifted materials. i have been seeing them
as it all has unfolded over the months in
photographs she has shared but the other day
a package arrived and here, oh here, an
array of such amazing generosity.

she who watches me

 

just above the computer screen, webbed
to the little lamp, actually, a web
on her eyebrow
O'keeffe

she monitors my earnestness

it's about to begin

 

 

 

and i am ready.
Jude Hill's Cloth Whispering

how amazing to write the words.

the notebook is set, pens, pencil

an opportunity of a life~time

this morning

 

i put the little scraps that were along with the two packets of cloth that
i got from
Deb Lacativa. (One was called Swamp Thing)
(i like the cloth and i like its name)
put those scraps in a bowl of water because they
were all squinched in one of her little crocheted pots...
then made a little scrap line for them to dry.
it looked like a party. you know, how you get the
house all ready for company, everything in place and
then once the party begins, it's all everywhere?

maybe today was a kind of birthday party.

making a world

 

 

good morning!

 

thrift shop bib overalls!
and my 2010 self portrait

how things go with one another and because of one another

 

this is the Winter back door. it is the door to the Room where i make cloths.
has a large window that i love.
was made, the door, out of a screen door by my daughter and granddaughter and me.
it does not fit the door casing, so there are many cracks that the wind enters.
Because i love the door, and because it is only really
cold
here, maybe 3 months of the year
i think of ways to just wait till it's warm again.

this old horse blanket is one. course wool. (i also stuff
things in the cracks of the door casing)
but the blanket. it is too linear for comfort and so
yesterday when i put it up for this winter, i added
the Lizard that was gifted to me by Jude in the Beast Class.
That Lizard has been many different places in the house
and now is totally and magically perfect on that
blanket, making everything ok and good.

Why? i am looking at shapes, colors, relationships.

variation,variation,variation on a theme

 

and etc.
OK. here we are.
Patty...softening the dark lower left. i think i cannot
change the bottom of the figure, but i did change the
rectangular "block"...added and created more of a
triangular shape?
StoryCloth~YES, trying things! it is Very Good!
Greasyming...THANK YOU! AND how GREAT that you
commented...who would have guessed that from so far away
you noticed????! i am very happy at this...! I would
give $50, not 50cents! hmmm. dark pool for the moon....
Penny~weight to the moon, as above, hmmmmm. but the moon
is very light...., but then, balance. hmmmm again.
Jude~which way is the Wind blowing...isn't that a B.Dylan
song?...the wind here blows All ways at once. that is
New Mexico, and that is what makes us sometimes crazy
Chambray. yes. i misquoted Nance. Sorry Nance. eeeeee.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for the pic!
Saraz~Dark Moon again...on the diagonal, yes, but....
you will learn to accept me as a stubborn friend...
and...Thank You for saying it has been fun. I liked
enornously your thoughts about deconstructing on your
blog....Very Much and it carried through today...
Twhich..the wind, yes, the Wind
Serena..and Wind again. i don't know.
Saraz again...i was happy you came back.

JUDE: "just looking" well, what more could i ever
ask in this life?

 

any thoughts?

 

ok.
most noticably, i took away the stars. but left a little stardust. i will need to get better at stars.

i made Sun beams...which i feel ok about

but mostly, dealt with the issue of the [quite blue] of the Twhich Aye cloth that nance has told me is
shot cotton (!) All the time i am working, i am experiencing the almost discomfort of this blue and
the kind of teal underneath. but I still, somehow, WANT this. i look and look at the colors of every
thing ~ which are unusual for me, not individually, but in combination....
i am very resistant to Color Theory and am now an old dog (new tricks,) so i just stare and stare.
What will make things "ok"?. Why did i choose the odd and almost greenish gauze for wind? i think
to accomodate the moth? or was it the flower seed area?, which i have changed by stitching black and
white there?

so, in defense of OR in response to all this, i kantha'd all of the lower parts with a very pale sage
green?(which is barely noticable) but which made the darker kantha thread above stand out even more...should i take that out?
or is it ok because it is Night up there at the top? and then, now,
what about the moon.

what has come.

 

not an asteroid, but better....
a beautiful gifted hapazome on
silk...just so so completely
excellent...
THANK YOU, Kaite! and i STILL
wish you would offer your artistry
for Us to work with.....i think
anyone would gladly pay the shipping
costs...
This piece, i could never use in a
cloth...it is to treasure, but maybe
small experimental pieces?, that
you might think are not quite right?
tiny fragments maybe???????
but, thank you tho. just just perfect!

 

all day

 

change

this off, that on.

maybe.

in this moment:
a moon
copper stars
silk carrier rod cacoon bottom right, kimberly baxter packwood
wind

i need Cloth Whispering

and yes, the third layer, blue cloth is
a gift, some months back, from Twhich Aye

we will rest for a while.

stuff gets born

 

WAIT! i should have done this last night, but just mostly
wanted the pics to be present.
this is my birth month. and it is a significant birth month
in my mind.
so these photos are part of what will probably continue in
a few different ways over the next days.
they are a ReView of an extraordinary year, last year.
this child was born to my granddaughter just before my
own birthday...he is now a walking talking one year old
little boy.
and things just kept coming. things i want to have here,
where the story of my cloth is kept.

oh jeez

 

i have missed the dolls.
(go back to first post of blog)
i have missed them.
but
here they come again,
a different way.
maybe every cloth i ever make will be called
I Love You Jude Hill

well...who'dve guessed

 

this one is called
I Love You Jude Hill

what's next ?

 

Gilly asked what's next?...
and i have been thinking in this direction all week,
tomorrow being the day of what's next.
i don't know. this month marks a year for me of
having found Spirit Cloth by accident and oh
so hesitantly beginning to follow. what an
amazing year.
so..a significant month to me. tomorrow morning
i will begin by fingering through the baskets of
scraps, hoping something happens. it's been
a while, with the preoccupation with the window
hangers, since i stitched a cloth. what if nothing
"comes"? what if i just stand there...blank?
i took this one off the wall board. i began it
in the Spirit Cloth Workshop. i'd like to do
whatever it is that would "finish" it....