Spirit Cloth

Not Part of a Plan

Just happens.

He ran between my legs when I opened the door from the porch to check on the raised bed seedlings. He leaped through the railing and ran beneath the porch and rolled in the dry dirt. I tried to catch him. He ran up the hill to the stone wall, disappeared and then reappeared from the forest. He ran around front just as the FedEx guy pulled up to deliver a much needed part to fix the shower.  He got frightened and disappeared.  I was in despair. I called and called.  I walked back up the stairs to the porch thinking oh gosh, what will happen if he doesn't find his way back?  If the fox comes? What if...? I opened the door to go in and he ran right between my legs, back to safety. This morning he has made it clear he wants to do it again.

The Man broke the axe trying to split some black locust wood. Gosh it is dense. We are getting old. I think we will need to invest in a splitter.  To be prepared for winter. Or maybe, in these strange days, just pay someone. Everyone is looking for work here. 

ClothWork just happens also.

You remember these from the other day? The explaining puzzles. The loose puzzles. That changed my path.

The green one, well you saw that one hanging on the porch yesterday. The other, just stitched to the center of the window puzzle, applique style, patchwork as applique. 

Back trimmed away to keep it thin...

Yes that is a bit of Deb's cloth, wouldn't want to waste it anyway.

I also added a couple of rows of magic squares to the sides. So now it is square. 

What a difference a day makes. 

What I love here is how it has more depth, the center seems to be far away. I can look through and deep into. 

I can leave this here now and stare through and into it for a while. Maybe name it.

It got chilly. 43 this morning. Mid June? Maybe time to do some robe work.

 

...in the spaces in between...

The time in between is the time so telling.

The breaks from what needs to be done. Calls to be done. When you come up for air.

Why do I call this my work?

Suddenly it is quite the opposite.

I have stitched quite deliberately, but without drama. In rows, and then sections.  I tacked the sections to the deck rail. To get to know this deck.  Forgetting the order of the design. Sensing the beauty in that. I fall back into the simpler time before art and judgement. And I am refreshed. Spaced out like this, the pieced sections have become, again, loose patches. Or even long cloths. Path-works.

The clothesline is temporarily out of reach due to some forest management. With the advisement of a new friend. 

Splitting needs to come soon.

When we first moved in, I dumped my kitchen scraps on one corner of the existing  raised bed because it was the only spot I could find where the soil was soft enough to turn over. 

The soil is good. What a gift, the soil is good. Even though I have decided that this will eventually be a dye garden,it looks like, for now, we have some bonus potatoes, tomatoes, onions and squash. I will space them out a bit today. Madder has been planted on the other side. That will take more time.

Yes, I feel torn apart.  Don't we all?

Piece.

A Patchwork, in perspective...

Yesterday was not a good day. I was feeling that.

Today I woke up and asked why? Because there was discomfort? Shame?

I can't and won't get into the thick of it. It involves my own  shit, and so much shit from others. And in the end, the question of Why am I here?  I called my son, we haven't talked in a while. I knew it was important to talk about stuff. It was good. I love him. 

I stitched a bit, not to escape but to think. Stitching helps me think.

And then my nephew, my youngest brother's oldest son, he lives in Montana, I don't see him much but I do follow him on social media.  I caught that he posted this. And I am putting it here because of it's honesty. And how it is just the best he could say. To break the silence.

I have been trying to put into words something, anything for days now. Watching the state of the world I have rarely felt less like I have anything worth saying. I am a white male in my early thirties that has lived the last decade of his life in a community in America that is over 90 percent white. I know less than nothing about the experiences of most African Americans across this country.
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I have quietly cried a lot listening to the news lately. I keep listening because it seems like one of the least things I can do. I haven’t watched the videos of George Floyd dying (I get my news in audio or text form, radio, podcasts, and newspaper websites) but I have seen the pictures and heard the audio of that man being murdered. I listened, four years ago, to the audio of Philando Castile being shot in front of his girlfriend and her 4 year old child after doing everything he could have possibly done to get through that traffic stop as a model citizen. I thought about what that poor kid went through a lot after that.
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These suck in my mind from listening to them, and these are two to many, and yet there are so many more. Trayvon Martin, and Akai Gurley, and Eric Garner, and Terence Crutcher, and Tamir Rice, and Mike Brown, and Freddie Gray, and Breonna Taylor, and, and, and...
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We as a country are failing on so many levels right now, law enforcement is only one of them, but we have been failing at it for a long time. And I believe law enforcement is necessary for a functional society but it must be there to protect and serve everyone and if you can’t see that there are places and people in this county for whom that is not true you are being willfully ignorant. And if you can listen to that man being slowly killed and not understand why there are a lot of people who feel the need to stand in the street and scream and maybe even break things you have no empathy.
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I can vote, I can protest (I hope safely because I am also scared shitless for all of my higher risk family right now, thanks COVID), I can donate what little I have to spare, and I can listen, and it will never feel like it will ever be enough. But maybe if enough other people can too, it will be.

I spent the day considering so many changes. Looking and wondering. How to be more useful. I caught a few thoughts, made a few calls, found a few paths.

Drank a glass of really shitty wine.

And the sun has returned today.

So life goes on, how will we make it right? Time will tell.

Still Going in May

It rains every morning here. It just gets greener and greener.

Food is growing in spite of critter interference, in the deck planters.

Decided to try a patchwork version of a green themed baby-sized quilt Just to show how that might happen. I picked the cross pattern. Nine 5" squares.  A green(ish) cross. A new Nine Lives Patch configuration.  Works for so many reasons right now. As a symbol and as a simple project. I guess I could call this one Life as well. Oh, maybe the life series. Oh that works for all of this Hunkering Down and getting through it. Going in green. 

Did a bit of Doodling. Of course. Which gave me more to think about.

Now I will talk...

link to audio if you see no player above.

I am just going to stitch this down then. Try something different.