Thank-full

We've been working the land, which has made for a long dry spell both stitch and blog-wise. But on Thanksgiving day I was determined to do at least one small thing, so I asked G for some help.  

"I've got this new cloth with lots of colors. What should I use?"

G considered and chose "the purple right here."

"Well then, what thread should I use?"

"Orange, like a longhorn."

Well, of course. So as we "rested" I stitched my recollection of 1 Thessalonians 5:18 that a long-ago boss particularly liked because it is often misconstrued as "be thankful for everything no matter what" but makes more sense as:

"Be thankful in all things"

And among many other things, I am indeed thankful that I connected with FASA: Fiber Artists of San Antonio

http://www.fiberartistsofsanantonio.org/

who had a "cobweb sale" at their last monthly meeting. There I found Jean Dahlgren 

http://jdahlgren.com/

selling $5 bags of hand-dyed cloth ...

and a room-full of living breathing kindred spirits. And when I learned that they had Elaine Lipson (yes, she of The Slow Cloth Manifesto) 

http://handeyemagazine.com/content/slow-cloth

at FASA's last monthly meeting, I wondered why I've waited so long.  

Anyway, getting back to Thanksgiving. G and I also crafted a cherry pie together (it's the one with the circles on top) ...

Sadly, dinner didn't make it on to the photo roll as we were too busy eating, drinking, and making merry. But a post-dinner lap nap ...

and a first-ever ukulele lesson, complete with rousing rendition of Old MacDonald had a Farm ...

were captured for posterity.

Last, but far from least, we returned home to find this waiting for us in the mail ...

a hand-wrought gift of fall foliage from Pam, a long-time friend who (with husband Wade) recently made the trek from their home in Colorado to visit us in the Hill Country. I envy her fall leaves ...

and hope we'll get to experience the beauty of their place someday.

Now "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden" ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3aOGnVKWbwc

Work in progress

We built this fire pit early on in our tenure ...

and named the immediate vicinity ...

But then came drought in 2011 and with it our realization that the fire pit was ill-advised. So we turned to other projects and the Rocky Road filled with King Ranch bluestem ...

KR bluestem is a non-native grass. Better than nothing, it does hold the soil, but is shallow-rooted and crowds out more desirable native grasses. So this week Don decided to start pulling the KR out and I joined the party ...

exposing and then moving loose rocks around the zexmenias ...

little bluestem ...

milkweed ...

side oats gramma ...

and best of all, yellow Indian grass ...

just in time to let the good seeds fall on newly disturbed ground ...

Golden.

Getting back to "The Land ... "

Working on the pennant for Mo's project put The Land as the Crow Flies on a back burner, as you can see from the date ...

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/07/homesteading.html

Now that I'm back to it, trees are beginning to crop up ...

And the cloth has been trimmed down ...

to fit within the space where it will eventually reside ...

The plan, for now at least, is to leave it hanging except when I am actively working on it. We'll see how that goes.

I also popped off a couple of simple projects to get back up to speed. Jeans mended with vintage cloth from Glennis Dolce ...

along with a little darning on the side ...

And a patched shell woven with Deb Lacativa's dyed floss ...

requested by G for his birthday ...

bringing back memories of Jude Hill's Considering Weave class in 2014 when I first met many of the Kindred Spirits who reside in the right sidebar. 

Letting go of a dream

I think it's done ...

although I'm hard pressed to say which is the back and which is the front ...

Either way, it has gathered Texas sun and wind into its being whilst holding words from Old Man Crow, Terry Tempest Williams, Wendell Berry, John Lennon, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Dee Mallon, Marti in New Mexico, and Mo herself ...

along with cloth and threads dyed by Ulrike Bogdan (Nemo Ignorat), Hazel Monte (Handstories), Deb Lacativa (More Whiffs, Glimmers & Left Oeuvres), Dee Mallon (Pattern and Outrage), Glennis Dolce (Shibori Girl), and my own hand ...

Then it made one last visit to Austin ...

where I told G the story of the cloth and the gifts to and from Mo ...

For Mo sent me a gift beyond measure: The Key Book, written about as she made it:

https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/?s=Key+book&submit=Search

and now seen here in Texas on the cover of The Illustrated Lyrics of Old Man Crow ...

together with a woven shell from the Outer Banks of North Carolina one last time ...

The pennon called Mo's Dream is now ready to whirl away ...

Getting to the heart of the matter

The pennon for Mo's dream looked promising laid out on the floor ...

but once stitched and hung, a gap appeared below the moon ...

So, two more cloth shreds needed, but what words to use?

Recalling that I first met Mo during Jude Hill's online Considering Weave, I decided to use "a torn and tattered heart" from a piece worked during that class

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/07/heart-strings.html

and wanting to use some of the indigo cloth Dee Mallon sent

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/10/deep-in-heart-of-texas.html

I asked her permission to quote "whole worlds live in some of these scraps" from this post

https://deemallon.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/wow-and-wow/

I think Dee's words will prove to be prophetic.

Giving credit where credit is due

Last month, a thing of beauty sailed into my life ...

written about here by Jude Hill ...

http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/2017/09/love-notes.html

And as I walked about the International Quilt Festival in Houston this past weekend, over and over again I said the words, "I always considered myself a needleworker. Because of Jude Hill, I now consider myself a quilter, too."

Because of Jude Hill, I knew to seek out Judy Martin's Mended World, which is also to be found in this wonderful tome (which had to come home with me) ...

http://www.shiborigirlstudios.com/

Because of Jude Hill, I met Glennis Dolce

http://www.shiborigirlstudios.com/

whose beautiful vintage Japanese cloth and Shibori eclipse will be perfect for some long overdue mending (among other things) ...

Because of Jude Hill, I am part of a wonderful community of like-minded stitchers who have led me to believe in myself enough to join SAQA.

Because of Jude Hill, I have learned so very much and will be forever grateful as I continue to play with cloth and stitch, learning more every day.

Tipping point (revised: parts 1 and 2)

Note: This post was published earlier today in two separate parts, now combined.

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So I went to Houston, home of the International Quilt Festival ... gathering place of 1500+ quilts, 500-some vendors, and an estimated 55,000 attendees. And with this post, I will certainly begin to make up for the recent dry spell on the blog.

The catalog for the quilt show

http://quilts.com/assets/fqf-17cc_2.pdf

was nearly 100 pages, with only the briefest of descriptions such as this synopsis of the special exhibits

http://quilts.com/quilt-festival-houston-special-exhibits.html

This is why I've been daunted by the Houston show in the past. How do you even begin to take in something on this scale? But Judy Martin's post about Mended World drew me in 

http://judys-journal.blogspot.com/2017/11/mended-world-is-in-houston.html

and the possibility of meeting Glennis Dolce at the Shibori Girl booth sealed the deal.

I took pictures, of course, following the guidelines that they be used only on a personal level with credit to both the artists (to follow) and the festival (see above). 

These, then, are the things that prompted me to raise the camera, beginning with Mended World ...

which was close enough to see this ...

And really, I could have just stopped there. But the SAQA exhibit included other quilts that spoke to me ...

and may perhaps speak to you as well, if you follow the directions on the exhibit label (though I have no idea how long these will work) ...

Wandering into another exhibit I found quilts about New Mexico ...

Another exhibit held an array of intriguing digital collages by Wen Redmond, who I later heard speaking in an open lecture ...

A piece in the Silent Auction drew my eye with its hand-dyed cloth ...

that I later connected to the Fiber on a Whim folks in the vendor hall

http://www.fiberonawhim.com/shop-online.htm

Their cloth (including linen) is made with commercial dyes, but they look like natural dyes. I resisted temptation and haven't bought any ... yet. They also have a blog which has been added to the Kindred Spirits.

I took a picture of this massive collaborative quilt thinking it was of New Mexico towns that I could decipher later ...

only to discover my error ...

And while there were so many incredible quilts I didn't photograph, there was something about Yoko Saito's that drew me in ...

this one, so incredibly intricate ...

with this description of how it was constructed ...

so different from this more structured take ...

Yep, this is what draws my eye ...

I swear I didn't plan this, but here is the next quilt on my photo roll ...

titled, aptly enough ...

A metaphor on more than one level.

This echo of the peace, love and rock and roll of my youth ...

was followed by this echo of my own recent return to activism ...

Then I found a quilt that affirmed the vision I have for my peace shawl project ...

And another that whispered in response to the pennon I am stitching for Mo ...

Seriously folks, you can't make this stuff up ... I'm blown away as I write this about how these images spoke to me as they appeared one by one today.

Then there was a renewal of a call I had heard before, but which is now speaking too loudly and clearly to be ignored ...

This is but one ...

of many ...

Until finally, I returned to where I had begun, just in time to record a video of the docent speaking about pieces in the SAQA exhibit (this is not an active link, btw) ...

As I waited for folks to move on so I could get one last picture or two, I took a shot of the piece next to Judy Martin's ...

"Dead letter box" chuckled a voice to my left ...

"Yes, quite literally," I replied quietly (having read the exhibit label earlier) ...

And so I ended the day, standing in awe of a creation ...

but realizing that some small part of it was within my reach ...

It was enough ... more than enough ... to fill a day