she had a brand

it hit me the other day that elderberry was branded. on her right thigh. i couldn't picture what the brand looked like. memories fade so quickly.

i went looking through photos, to remember.

from welcome to my world, 4-17-10. blogs are helpful things.


from an elder cloth, posted 7-9-11. you can see it a little better in this pic. her hair was shorter, it was summer and she had shed.

can you see it there? ♀
like a sideways stick figure. a hangman without the legs.
or perhaps a sideways symbol for female, or venus.
(although there would have been no need to brand her female, that was easy enough to see.)

i wish i could look at it again, trace it with my fingers. but she didn't like being touched.

i can't imagine what this symbol must have meant meant to those who marked her. i don't want to know or imagine what that was like. but it will, it must be part of my cloth.

i love spinning thin

i really, really do.
this is bfl beautifully dyed by laila.
spun cobweb thin on my vintage french spindle.
these pics are before the yarn was set.
isn't it amazing when singles retain the wool's crimp?

it's on my list of goals for the year to spin and knit an orenberg shawl.
i've been getting ready for this for a while..

i have the russian goat-down (still unwashed)..
the silk to ply it with (it's thread-plied, ultra-thin)..
a variety of spindles, although not the russian one i'm coveting...
and the pattern.

better start soon..

family photos i've never seen

except for this first one of me and my parents, xmas 1969. i was one.




the others, my brother just scanned and emailed me today. so odd and melancholy that there were these dear ghosties out floating, stuck somewhere in mum's stash. glad to have them more solidly here now.

i love how mum strung her rose bead necklace. here are more drying..


and then there's the baby.

use vs beauty, or, the limits of what remains

excavation, part 2: removing the top pieced layer from the backing and pulling away the batting...


i've only done this corner so far, to see, and here's what's left of the pieced top...



it's so beautiful, but so very delicate.
i'm not sure that re-backing it will enhance it or make it last.
and what are these fabrics, anyway?
they look and feel gauzy, organza-ish.
no wonder she whose stitches i've removed encased it inside the other quilt.
what to do, what to do..

excavation part 1

i've been stumped all this time about what to do with my elder cloth. i didn't want to rush it, and figured the answer would come in time. i bought some scrim to stabilize the open areas, but then realized it still wouldn't work with doggy paws. then recently i saw the discussions on bee creative where deb was having a similar issue, and cindy suggested weaving into the cloth, which worked great. then cindy suggested needle weaving, which would be so time-consuming, but brilliant.

still, i couldn't get going with it. the size of my starter cloth was intimidating. i did some stitching, trying to tack things down, but it didn't feel good, and i couldn't visualize it. so i did what i should have done ages ago and put the cloth on the wall.


looking at the whole of it, with the huge seam down the middle, it looks to have been joined not for any design purpose, but just to keep the cloth together and to act as batting in the smaller quilt.


looking at that seam, i just couldn't resist...

and i see that this inner quilt is separately quilted and backed, and only lightly tacked to the current back.


so i am now bent on deconstruction. after i fully remove this backing (and use it somewhere else in this cloth), i think i'm also going to take the entire ragged pieced top layer off and re-back it without the batting (like cindy suggested early on!) and maybe rework some of the pieces with weaving of some kind. we'll see..

VM: the last frontier

i spun this pretty mohair yarn for a sweet friend who is a doll artist. she has bought a few skeins from me to use for the crowning glory (hair) for her amazing creations.

since i knew this wouldn't be used for knitting or a next-to-skin project, i indulged myself a bit and didn't bother so much with what spinners call "VM" or "vegetable matter." this is the little bits of grass and hay that you find in most raw fleeces, even after they have been thoroughly scoured. this is because these little bits cling to the wool, and have to be picked out if you are preparing a fleece by hand - which takes for*ever*. (at the mills, they use chemicals to dissolve the vm). i much prefer to process my own just the way i want, and avoid icky chemicals, and so i usually do my best to pick out all the bits before and after washing, and then the remaining bits fall out while i'm spinning. but this is one reason i've been reluctant to offer batts in my etsy shop - i can't get the wool as vm-free as a fiber mill.

but sometimes i think, what exactly is the Big Deal with VM? especially when i'm also drying flowers, dyeing with leaves and making beads out of rose petals? why does the addition a different sort of natural material mean that wool is considered a lesser-grade?

while i don't want bits of bark poking me from inside a sweater, i really don't mind a little bit of grass left over from where the bunny was eating, or a tiny bit of twig from where the sheep was cavorting. especially in art yarn. if yarn isn't going to be next to a baby's head or your love's neck, is VM really a problem? knitters, what am i missing?

this is laika

sorry for the bloggy silence, we've been a bit sleep-deprived..
we're here though, chewing, piddling and napping when we can.
and a few stitches and turns of the wheel.
these puppy days are so precious.

blackish rose

i have been enjoying frankenstitching, and the beginnings and prospect of 250-some episodes of murder, she wrote on netflix, but recording the bead process is taking bloggy precedence.




we've had to modify the original recipe, which called for grinding and drying the petals for two weeks. the consistency was supposed to be a paste, but instead it was a fine powder. maybe caused by something fishy that they do to commercially-grown roses so we switched to another recipe that calls for simmering the ground petals for an hour. they plumped right up and after a few days of this, mum has deemed them the right consistency for rolling.



this is the rose water strained off after simmering. the aroma is heady, dazzling! and the wolf moon was full last night, too.

i loved the line at the bottom of this blog entry by ms uncertainty principles, where i found myself thanks to jude, "NOSTALGIA IS INTOXICATION."

gather ye

mum and i are fascinated with old-time recipes for making rose beads. this is our first, experimental batch. the rose petals are to be ground every day and left to sit in cast iron for two weeks. then they should be a paste to roll into beads. roses seem to be in my future, since while thrifting we also found a book on antique roses of the south, rose-gardening gloves and pruning shears. i planted one bush last year and will add one or two more every year until i am old and surrounded.

the flue has delayed my homegoing and new year to-dos.. although i did stich a bone yesterday. trying to just relax and enjoy blogland, sleep, and dreams of rose bushes, hips and beads.

new year's dye

inspired by jude's experiments, we tried lots of do-dads to see what would dye, with just a bit of tea. only the skate key made dark marks. the elephant left a light golden silhouette.

mara xmas to mee

i love this pic of mum modeling the shawl i finished on christmas (it wasn't really taken in '81, that's a hipstamatic thing). it's a simple design, madeline tosh's mara, but i made mine huge and it's such a nice weight. i've not been a shawl person, but this is such an easy shawl to wear. it's been a good, soulful season, it really has.

i feel much more clear about things, in part because hub and i started juicing and having some greens and nutrition means that my health has improved. and i'm deciding, here as i write: my gift to myself is to leave school behind. i got a lot out of it back when i was doing course work, but i mustn't keep torturing myself with it. it doesn't fit my life any more. it's a kind gesture to let myself off the hook with this. it's time for life without hooks. and if it's a safety net i've been hanging onto, it's a very false and temporary one. i've gone back and forth with this so many times, but putting it here makes it real. no more whining about it or endless what-iffing. i want to put my energy into moving forward, being brave and having faith. thank you all for listening to me through all this and supporting.

i was making a list of all the things i want to do in 2012, the things that make me want to live, that fill me up. they involve a lot of making and growing of things. tinctures, and stitches, and friendships.


bye-bye, academe. nice knowing you.

santa-mum

such wonderful gifties! wishing you many treasures and nourishment and merriment today. xxooo

just a little light

happy solstice, all.

musing forward

thinking a lot lately about continuing, and with things that aren't always so easy to keep going. like the hotel as studio space (although i did get that grant to help pay for it!), and then school. the last two proposals i turned in didn't make my advisors happy. and so i thought i would probably quit, or even apply to the fiber arts program at NC state, but i haven't been able to make that decision yet.

now i've got another, related project proposal brewing in my head. it has to do with things that have been right under my nose all this time.. studying the connection between fiber and animals. what kind of relationships are there between farmers and animals, and fiber workers and the animals that produced their fiber? if i stay on-track with documenting these relationships, it should be ok with my anthropologist advisor.

i love my etsy business. i absolutely adore working it in all its aspects. the people i've met are incredible, and in many ways it suits me so well that i think, just forget academia already, who needs it? it's been such a great year in this way, and my business has shown real potential!

the only thing is that it's hard being focused on production. i knew this and have heard it many times, but i had not experienced it myself before this season. i don't want to get caught up in working faster, producing more more more. although i love that there's been a demand, i'm not a fast crafter. sometimes the pace is fun and energizing, but ... if i have a choice, i'd rather be able to focus more on what i'm doing .. than on doing more.

looking forward at goals and plans... in order to make my etsy business a living, i would need to grow it quite a bit. perhaps that will happen anyway in ways that feel good. i have some ideas for how that could work. but i still wonder if i don't also want an academic component with some writing and teaching, especially since it's an opportunity i have now, to try and integrate these worlds, and once i quit, i won't have it again. can i make a real, honest commitment to it, finally? and, is it worth it?

i think that i'll spend the next few weeks brainstorming this and i can spend some time at the uni library while i'm visiting mum over the holidays.

spinning into the season

some custom spins for a local who also wants lessons! what is it i was just saying about teaching? the blog is such a powerful tool for focusing our intentions - even if i mostly just ask questions! it's still putting it out there. and i'll get to follow jude's awesome "do it" comment, even though it's lost now. that woman packs the wisdom. but it was there for a day or two, you might have even seen it.

so a number of weeks worth of comments have gone missing. i'm pretty upset with blogger for somehow changing my comment settings so that no-one could comment (thanks so much grace for telling me!) but in trying to fix it, i deleted the thingymawidget that i had installed to allow threaded comments. and that's what lost everyone's comments. they weren't actually part of blogger, they were part of "intense debate" or whatever, so now they are just gone. i spent more than a day messing with wordpress and debating the merits of various blogging platforms.. i haven't decided anything yet, i still like my little blog and it feels like home. so it's not that huge of a thing i guess, but..

i really love comments! so thank you for each and every one. even if they aren't here now.

update **thanks to my wonderful mentor mathyld, i've replaced some of the comments manually, from my emails, with your names and url's. the dates and times are still wrong. but yay!