Spirit Cloth

Becoming Spring

Full Worm Moon.  2013.

At the time of this spring Moon, the ground begins to soften and earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of robins.
Algonquin.

The fulling of this moon is not quite complete, because I sort of lost track of time.  Spring has been so slow coming.   I'm still at it.  So is spring.

Winter deepens

Mom Slept.

Snow fell.

Cloth stayed in my mind.  

Since my time is thinner these days, I will be blogging less in order to fulfill my commitment to the Spirit Cloth Diaries.   But I will talk more about that later.

Mom gave me a whole bunch more of this sheer linen.  She was saving it .  From great grandma.  Never seen anything like it anywhere.  Cloth is the best gift.  For me.   She knows that.  I have more stitched wings on my mind.

Woven through Going

I am just trying to get Through a few things at the moment.  All the while, pinning a few things here, stitching a few things there.    And today  getting out of the grey for a while.   Focusing on Through,   understanding it as   some sort of multi layered going.   A biggere sense of Continuing.    More integrated.  Something like weaving.  

Fringe has always been an important component for me.    Over the years it evolved into my personal symbol for continuing.      And there is a lot to say about that.     Probably it will result in a whole lot of What-iffing.   I think I will even be Whispering Fringe.  Which I can't get to at the moment because a lot of things are moving through me .  And  vice versa.

This wrapped fringe is from a strap I wove for a hand woven bag  in 1971 ( I think) .   There used to be feathers on the ends, but they have disappeared.  It needs a bit of repair  but it reaches way back.    Which adds to its  symbolism.     How it started out as a thread unnoticed and moved through my life.

After 6 grey days, the sun came out. 

My brother will be here , all the way form Idaho, for a few days.   Actually, the whole family  will be gathered around Mom, who hasn't been feeling too well.  She is getting old.  We will move through  a few days days together,  and I will be back later.

 (this piece continued from here)

Restoring sanity

 

It was probably back in 2007,  that the idea struck me.  Not named, but  increasingly ever present.   And around that time,  I was recording  my  idea stream  in a blog called What if(?), which I turned into a private place of record keeping for a while.   All of this was way back, before there was  such a large community here.  Some of you remember.

What ifs were clips of process.  More like questions and answers.   Just the very beginnings.  Seeds.  Well anyway, this one just kept going.  Growing quietly,  slowly, like things with good roots do.  I used the technique here and there in other work,  but I made many small  singular and focused samples.  100 to be exact.  Studies  and components for a body of larger works which are in process.  I never talked about them here.  This project has been part of a personal space I cleared for myself for a while.  A place less cluttered with words and such.  These cloths, I feel,  have their own art and cloth voice, and I don't need to say a lot about them.  One of the ways I like to define sanity is simply clarity of being. 

So anyway, the one above is Sanity 101.

Because I am not anywhere near sane.

I will be bringing What if  back in a new form at year's end.

As a separate learning space.

nine scraps

8:00 AM   Yesterday,  while mom looked at old photos and told me stories of when she was a child,  I spent about two and a half hours stitching nine scraps of old cloth together and marking the places where they met.   Just for the hell of it.  Now I am just looking.  Remembering.  And looking forward to the day.  It is these kinds of things that give me the most pleasure lately.

The scraps had no particular association with one another.  Now they seem to.  And knowing cloth,  and wear,  I bet the meeting points will last longer than the  body of the scraps themselves.  A few bits held by a thread,  a knot of  chance meeting.  Held by a thread  for a moment or longer.   A simple story.