- How time flies

Patch #213 J turns four ...

Seems like yesterday and forever ago ...

Happy days ...

- Of days, weeks, months ...

There was rain this week, including one day when sun alternated with rain, and another when the skies opened for a few amazing minutes and just as quickly closed again ...

The weather cloth stretches longer yet ...

as another month draws to a close with Patch #212 July ...

which is one day early because tomorrow promises even more special moments to remember.

- They're finally over

I just read an article that claimed you really don't have a moral obligation to watch political conventions. A bit late for that unfortunately.

Anyway, as I whacked away in the garden today, I asked myself what exactly I've done recently that would count as political action. Here's my list:

- voted (mostly a pointless exercise as I live in a red state)

-  stitched a peace pennant for India Flint's Solace Project

-  stitched a quilt square for Dee Mallon's Hearts for Charleston

It's been a long time since I've demonstrated (the most recent was a very brief stint at Occupy Austin). And my political donations have been few and far between. This is Texas, after all (interesting side note: we actually lived in a blue congressional district for a while,  but got gerrymandered out of it after the 2010 census).

But now, I feel the need to ramp things up a bit. Encourage family members to register to vote. Put some of my thoughts into writing here. And send my thoughts in writing to those who would govern us (both those I agree with and more importantly, those I don't).

So Patches #208-210 for July 26-28 are  words that continue to echo in my head ... 

And Patch #211 for today is a token of my promise to myself ...

Because "they" can't know what I'm thinking if I don't tell them. 

- Hope?

What choice do we have?

Only one that I can see. 

So many elections ... too many ... most ... I have voted for the lesser of two evils.

Then hoped for the best.

Maybe someday.

- Peace out

The chant "no more war" echoed through the arena, eventually fading away under the relentless speechifying.

I have always believed this to be the ultimate solution to the woes of this world.

It feels hopeless.

- Not a lot

Just a couple of patches for July 21 (which had interesting parallels with the DNC) ...

and July 22 (entitled Tennis Whites, a tactile reminder of the strings in my old Slazenger racket) ...

Then we're off to Austin.

- Shades of gray

Patch #207 Sun and rain

This is a blurry picture of a gray fox kit, taken in haste ...

... one of two that sauntered through the yard not five feet from my window (though they had moved on by the time I took the picture). 

Then there were the crows ...

which were a little more cooperative.

And there were clouds ...

wonderfully dark clouds, with thunder rumbling inside ... bringing with them the smell of rain. Rain!

- Humming along

First off, if you've already read yesterday's "Cloudy ..." post, please take another look as I neglected to include the Summer Sky patch. So I'm going to put today's patch first. 

Patch #206 Water

It's loosely based on our bird bath ...

which provides water not only to birds, but also to insects, lizards ...

and the occasional deer (but only when they are thirsty beyond caring that the house is so close by).

Three more patches were also completed for July 16-18 ...

The first is a composite of the patches currently in play on the weather cloth ...

Rain on the left, no rain across the top, and rain clouds on the right. The newer patches in the center will enable me to depict those days that are graced by both sun and rain (middle left), misty mornings (lower middle right), and puffy white cloud days (upper middle right).

The second patch ...

documents my first attempts at using Inktense pencils to depict critters ...

a benchmark of sorts for where I am in my creative journeying.

And the last of the three will be familiar to those of you who cruised down the road in the late 60s and early 70s ...

because I woke up last Monday thinking about a radio show from my childhood: Rambling with Gambling on WOR, which my parents listened to in the morning during breakfast. Fearless Fred Feldman gave traffic reports from his helicopter ("tie-ups on the Koss-kee-oss-koh bridge"), while John Gambling spun tunes like Pack up your Troubles, King of the Road, Buffalo Gals, and Rambling Rose (of course).

This ad appeared in the NY Times on the same day ...

leading to more memory-weaving, supplemented with some Google searches. AM radio was my gateway dial, with WABC and Cousin Brucie (Bruce Morrow) leading the hit parade, followed by WMCA when the music stopped for ads and "station identification." 

But by high school, FM reigned supreme, with 95.5 WPLJ leading the list of go-to stations, the better to hear the deep album cuts that became the soundtrack of my youth.

Who am I kidding? The soundtrack of my life. I still love rock-and-roll ... always will.

P.S. Of course, today there are clouds ...

- Cloudy with a chance of no rain

Addendum

Patch #205 Summer sky

Somehow I managed to forget to include this patch yesterday. In any case, it was cut from this indigo-dyed shibori cloth made last November during Maura Ambrose's dye workshop ...

Original Post

"Clouds," I thought to myself yesterday, "that's what I'll write about tomorrow."

As with last summer, depicted here in the cloth Land of Flood and Drought ...

there has been no rain this July either ...

And while there was still enough residual moisture in the ground last week to raise some morning mists, this past week has been bone dry.

Amazingly, though, there are often clouds in the afternoon, hence these streaky white patches ...

Sometimes there are even enough clouds to raise the (false) hope of rain. But rather than massing and turning somber gray, the clouds of Texas summer stay white and puffy, if they stay at all ...

Meantime, the floodplain belies its name, turning the dormant brown of an east coast field in midwinter ... 

And irony abounds as Snow-on-the-Mountain and Frostweed are the only wildflowers that are coming into bloom. 

- If at first you don't succeed ...

Retrospective (7/25/2016)

Patch #204 Tennis whites

While we were (belatedly) in Austin, we spent some time bouncing tennis balls to G. Turns out he's a natural. Anyway, his Wilson kid's racket brought back memories of fingering the strings on my beloved Slazenger wood racket. Guess that and the reference to tennis whites pretty much date me!

Original Post

So, I wanted to make a patch that recalled the beautiful presentation of the A-Tan Sushi Tuna Tower on July 19th. Eventually, I ended up here ...

but it wasn't easy. 

My first try looked like this ...

and the back was even worse ...

But I persevered, deciding to make a much larger version ...

which I stitched Spirit Cloth style onto a fine linen backing ...

Then I auditioned possible patches ...

ending up with the final version shown up top for the July 19th post. I dare say, it had a much neater back than my first try ...

And unlike lunch at A-Tan, this time there were some leftovers ...

- The way it was

Retrospective (7/25/2016)

Patch #203 Sometimes stuff happens ...

Original Post

My father passed away in 2012, but my brother and sister-in-law are still sorting through all the "stuff" he left behind in his house on Shelter Island. Every so often, they find something they think I might be interested in and stick it in a box. When the box is full, they send it off to Texas.

This is one of several things that arrived in the mail last Thursday ...

I was probably 8 or 9 years old, but I remember buying this kit at Claudio's Marina in Greenport on a rainy day during our annual Shelter Island vacation. No doubt it was intended to keep me occupied on the days we couldn't get to the beach. What I liked most about it was the departure from the stamped cross stitch that had been my initial training ground. And I thought it was beyond cool that you got to combine threads of different colors to stitch the clouds and the waves.

My current-day self was aghast at the subject matter: the harpooning of a whale. Likewise, I lamented my parents' use of Masonite as a backing board, the acid from which effectively "cooked" the cloth.

Still, a memory is a memory, so I cut a patch of blue sky ...

and added it to my July 14th post "Learning as I go" ... which seemed apt.

The rest of the day was odd ... two patches just didn't work out so I switched to stitching the patches for the first half of July onto Remember 2016 ...

Honestly, I think the convention coverage has gotten to me ... and there's still another week to go.

- Go Tribe!

Today is my son-in-law's birthday, so I made Patch #202 William and Mary cypher in his honor ...

As usual, I didn't get a card in the mail in time. It's one of my (many) character flaws that I am consistently unable to buy, sign, stamp, and post birthday cards in a timely manner ... even with automated calendar alerts.

But hey, this isn't about me. It's about sons-in-law. Not just Jake, whose birthday is today, but also Paul, whose birthday was March 25th. You could look back to my blog post for that day and discover that I neglected to create a birthday patch for Paul. 

Furthermore, you could look back to my blog post for June 17th, where you would find that I also neglected to create a birthday patch for Don ... my husband ... whose birthday is the day before mine.

But as I said, this isn't about me. It's about Jake, who attended the College of William and Mary ... where he played football ... in Williamsburg ... where he met my daughter Meliss  ... where I too got my undergraduate degree, and eventually (wonder of wonders) became an adjunct faculty member. But it's really not about me. 

Jake's family has a wonderful tradition wherein all the guys have the initials JWW. It's a tradition that has been carried on with our grandsons Jackson Wyatt (fondly known as "J") and Jace Weston (who is rapidly outgrowing his "Baby Jace" moniker).

So Happy Birthday Jake! I'll bake you a cake and make a lasagna when we come to St Louis next month. In the meantime, I don't know if you ever noticed, but if you flip the W&M cypher upside down, there's another W ...

Just what you always wanted, right?

P.S. Paul, I owe you one.

- Mountains or beach?

Retrospective (7/22/2016)

Patch #201 Tuna Tower

Original Post

My belated patch for July 8th is a play on Don's assemblage Beach or Mountains, which I first wrote about two years ago (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/06/good-very-eye-imho.html?m=1). 

I've turned it around to ...

One way or the other, this question has been asked of boyfriends, and then of potential spouses for our daughters. For many years, the "correct" answer was "beach." However, once we moved to the Texas Hill Country (1000 feet closer to heaven), the answer changed to "yes" because we've come to love both (okay, Don's always loved the mountains, but now I've learned to love the land, too).

Around the same time as Don was making his Beach or Mountains assemblage ...

I was embarking on Jude Hill's Considering Weave. There I met an amazing group of Kindred Spirits who inspire me to this day. Mo at It's Crow Time was working on an illustration of Old Man Crow's music that included a lock and key. So I sent her a bit of rusted cloth, much like this one ...

made while rusting the key for Don's assemblage ...

She in turn used that bit of rusted cloth in The Key Book last year (https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/the-key-book/).

Perfect, I thought, I'll use my bit of cloth for a Remember patch (at last). Except ... there was the comment Mo made about how tricky it can be to stitch on rust ... and the size wasn't quite right for the Remember 2016 patches.

So I drew a new, smaller key, colored it with Inktense pencils, carefully lettered the words with a Pitt pen, and stitched a single strand of floss around the edges.

Oh, and there's this ... when I made the Inktense tulip yesterday, some color bled. Not a lot, but not intended. Today, I took advantage of that tendency, letting the colors bleed, as they did in the original rust cloth. And truly, the Inktense was much easier to stitch through than rust.

So, Patch #190 Mountains or Beach? has found its way to the original July 8th post.

As for today, I'm wondering how I might remember this ...

exceptional tuna sashimi at A-Tan Bistro in San Marcos, Texas. Gotta love it ... and the colors!

Addendum: The Key Book by Mo was gifted to me in late 2017 ...  words fail me
http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/11/letting-go-of-dream.html