Spirit Cloth

a ring of warmth

8:30 AM: It is cold.  Seems only right for February. So not complaining.  I am experiencing some blog issues  and in order to resolve them I have simplified the format to cut down on the traffic.  Things will evolve into something more "normal" soon.  But still, I am enjoying the simplicity.   And I have been building a website, just to gather all the pieces of Spirit Cloth in one convenient place.  Like Home.  Soon. Meanwhile, I am still working on all the unfinished heart pieces  I have hanging around here.  Just because  it's that time of year. Hopefully they will all be done by this time next year.

Today I really like this

9:52 AM:  Found the source of the spam.  The comment issue is still outstanding.

12:00 PM:  OK. I am going to try to switch back.  Some of my sidebar links were corrupted, what ever that means. So I have to rebuild some of my links lists.  Be patient with me.  I would rather be stitching.

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OK, yes some things are missing, that's enough fiddling for today. Typepad will not let me create a link list at the moment. So hey ho, maybe tomorrow.

interruption

Temporary insanity.

A little maintenance.

See you later.

outside in february

 At a time of year when I usually ration the firewood to stretch the heat until spring, it is simply too nice to be indoors.

Warm, balmy even, but still the long winter shadows

So it's an outside day. Again.

No wonder I didn't finish this in time for my full moon shop update. 

It's ok. I don't mind holding it a bit longer. This one has nine hearts but one of them is moonshaped.

nine hearts on a snowy sunday

A simple arrangement. In pinkish brown. Part of an old  whisper.

One heart, two hearts, three hearts

Four.

Five hearts, six hearts,

Seven.

And two more.

A little holiday cloth. And just trying to redefine the valentine/heart once again. I think something less artificial is a good start.

Later...

...there were 9 hearts overlapping. minus 1. Not because I planned it that way but because I counted wrong.

home in winter

It did snow. It is still snowing. This morning some of the snow fell through the spaces on the deck, making it look stitched.

The first thing I thought of was the birds. I went out to check the feeders. Noticing these little tracks I thought of them as stitches as well. Closing a gap.  And the how much point of view and scale are connected.  How much scale has to do with reach.

I always love to look at the line where inside meets outside here in the studio. Especially in winter when there is a carpet on both sides of the glass. One space. Broken by point of view.  I will take Everything out of the studio today, except maybe a chair.  I just want to see it as an empty space. Be in it like that. Strip it of distraction. Make it just a Place for a while.

Today's ring is a simple nest.  A result of intention and hard work. Woven from scrap. Just a nest.

For some reason, it never seems like winter until it snows. It feel gloriously like winter today.

a cold morning

Up early with not a lot to say, except  the lamplight looks like moonlight.  And the Magic Cloth 2 is on the wall... but not for long.

The nice thing about large cloth is that you can sit under it while you are still stitching it. This morning the Magic Cloth 1 is a shelter from the chill of the studio. I sat under it before lighting the fire. To watch the sun come up. It kept me warm. It is a good cloth.

If you didn't have a warm cloth, this morning would be a good morning to be covered in fur.

I. We. spent a couple of days trying to imagine a world without internet.  A life where building a shelter, growing food and staying healthy and occasionally stitching a warm cloth could be enough, everything.  I stitched while we chatted away.  And the eye that was born by opening a seam just wide enough to see through it gained focus.  I placed the eye's center to coincide with the first simple ring, thinking to myself, that a ring of vision starts with an eye.  The tiny brown kantha lightly defines the nine patch as a symbol of my beginnings in cloth.  The  brown thread was salvaged from the hem of an old skirt and dyed with walnut.

Some say dreaming is a waste of time. That dreaming is separate from doing.  I think dreaming is part of the natural order of living a life.  And when you look back , it seems like a dream anyway. But it wasn't.   Sometimes I think a dream is just a way to reorder moments into a story that can make more sense. To see in a new way 

 Close your eyes .

 

the ragged ring

Today's ring is ragged with a few bites taken out of it, a few pieces missing from the puzzle. Today's moon is a wild one.

Last night I dreamt that I was wilder and I swallowed it whole.

This piece was started in Contemporary Boro 1 and has been hanging in a corner of the studio ever since.  I will work on this one  now.  I decided to turn it around, for a wider format ( already 30") , to express the time that has passed since it began.  It seems wilder now.  A beast moon.

(Work on this cloth has continued here.)

light and dark and dirty

9 AM

Today's ring is filled with dirty laundry.

Perhaps it will be tomorrow's ring as well. Because it is 60 degrees. It's a walking day.

6:13 PM

What a day really.  Hard to believe it is January. What is that anyway?

January.  I guess, when we named it,  we decided it was going to be the same forever.

We are so arrogant.

Time to do the breakfast dishes.

Maybe tomorrow. 

January begins

Well yes, it is finally VERY cold. And grey. And it is great to have the green still inside, growing. And good too, to watch the days grow longer.

The cloth on the wall is growing too. Patterned by the January brightness, changing as the day turns.

I drew an A today, for no other reason than just, well, it's doodle wednesday.

(Magic Diaries 2 has begun. If you signed up and have not received the access email, check your Pay Pal email or your spam folder. And email me if it is not there. thanks...)